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Long screencap-laden Agent Carter squee post
I am crushing so hard on the Agent Carter show right now, you guys. I think it helps a lot that it's only a self-contained 8 episodes, so there's a complete story arc and I can kind of just tuck it into my brain and give it some happy space there. I really hope there's a season two, but at the same time I almost feel like a season two would be a mixed blessing, because it gave me so much of I wanted already, and I would hate another season to leave it in a much worse place. (But I could have another season of their FACES! I am torn.) Let's face it, I will be sad if it's cancelled, but I'm also very happy with the 8 episodes we got.
I've been thinking about the aspects of the show that appeal to me, and while there are many reasons why I like it so much, I think part of it is that ... let me see, there is literally NO way to phrase this without sounding (for me) uncomfortably buzzwordy, but it's woman-centric and non-male-gazey not just in a way that most superhero stuff isn't, but even most genre shows starring female characters aren't. I think the big thing I kept feeling watching the show is This show feels like it's written FOR ME. I feel like I, me, my demographic is the target audience of this -- and I don't mean just "women generally" but "women like me"; this show appeals to me in a way that, say, Sex in the City type shows which are also aimed at a female demographic simply don't. I feel like I can relate to women like Peggy and Angie in a way I can't to women in most sci-fi stuff -- I love the female geniuses and leather-clad action heroes with impeccable makeup and so forth, but I don't really feel like "hey, that's me!" And while I don't have any particular problem empathizing with characters who are not like me, I can't remember the last time I've identified with a woman in sci-fi media as hard as I do with Peggy. I love many, many fictional characters, but there is a sort of coming-home comfort to this show (in spite of all the terrible stuff that happens on it) that just makes me feel like this is a sci-fi action show where PEOPLE LIKE ME are welcome and wanted.
That's not even a feeling I go around craving in particular. I literally don't care about that stuff most of the time! I just like what I like, and since I'm a female fan of sci-fi and superhero stuff, a ton of what I like is technically aimed at boys. But in all my many years of loving superheroes, and particularly throughout however many movies and shows I've enjoyed in the MCU, this is the first time I've really felt like somebody made a superhero thing FOR ME, and I had no idea how good that feeling is.
This obviously is not the only reason I like the show or even the main reason(s). It's more like something that snuck up on me and became a substrate underlying everything else I like about the show, if that makes any sense.
(Click screencaps for bigger versions, by the way.)
Ever since the finale, I've been meaning to make a long post about the show with All My Thoughts, but I don't even know where to BEGIN! I start thinking about general things I want to talk about, and little specific things I want to point out, and just bog down because there is SO MUCH I love about this show. I love every single character on it, even the awful ones. I love how thoroughly Peggy-focused it is; everything from the character relationships to the plots pivots around Peggy as its fulcrum (which is something that even a lot of female-focused genre shows often lose sight of). But I also love the mini-arcs that most of the other characters get: Sousa going from the lonely, isolated bottom guy in the office hierarchy to a valued member of the team; Thompson's one-step-forward, two-steps-back waltz with redemption and shades of gray; Jarvis going from butler to (occasional) action hero. I love that the MCU finally gave us a female villain, and she is GREAT: cold as ice, chameleonic, reveling in pain and destruction.
Also - you know how I complained about 1x07 squandering the potential of a mind-controlling villain? 1x08 turned that right around; it was straight out of the![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sholio's id Playbook of Mind-Control Tropes. :D (That scene with Sousa and Thompson, omfg.)
Sousa, you amazing troll.
I admit that I've sort of latched onto the Peggy-Sousa-Thompson triad as the platonic (or otherwise) OT3 of my heart, which is not to say I don't have an immense and overwhelming fondness for all the other character relationships on the show. I adore the way that Howard and Peggy, and Peggy and Jarvis, are explicitly set up as platonic and then played out bromance-style. I love Peggy's tentative reaching out to Angie, and the way that Angie gets her, and what she's going through, in a way that none of the guys do, even though Angie doesn't know any of the details of her day-to-day life. (The "I'd like to tell you about my day" scene in the diner in 1x03 is still one of my favorites in the whole series.)
And the whole idea of Peggy and Angie doing normal-person things, when Peggy's never really had a female friend to do normal-girl things with before, is so completely the wish-fulfillment plot of my heart. Well, that or scads of h/c with Peggy and Sousa and Thompson.
... or the actual canon h/c; that's also good.
Just ... ALL THESE RELATIONSHIPS. All these characters. I'm so fantastically multishippy/multi-friendshippy about this show. I could go for buddyfic with just about ANY combination of these people, and I think there's about a half-dozen ships I'm semi-into. (To the extent that I really ship at all, which I don't, much. I kinda just want ALL THE TEAMY GEN/BUDDYFIC/ETC.)
And yeahhhhh, Thompson is my current character I know I shouldn't like but can't help myself. I was kind of relieved to find out he isn't as universally hated in the fandom as I was expecting ... I say kind of relieved because there's a predictable fannish minority for whom he can do no wrong even though HE DOES WRONG ALL THE TIME, OMFG DO YOU EVEN WATCH THE SHOW. I've run across multiple posts on Tumblr claiming that Thompson taking credit for Peggy's heroism at the end of 1x08 is something that he's doing for her, because the world's not ready for her yet. To which I can only say, get off my side, because you are SO WRONG, random tumblr person. He takes credit for her work because he is a jerkass. But he's a jerkass I really fucking like. /o\ I'm just trying to stay clearheaded about what he actually is, and what he does, which is a lot of really awful shit.
I've probably spent more time thinking analytically about Thompson than most of the others due to trying to figure out how to write him, and the way Peggy and Sousa relate to him in the wake of 1x08, in a way that's in-character and fair to everyone. (Yes, I'm writing fanfic. I've currently got 3 different fics in various stages of development; the only reason why I haven't posted anything yet is because nothing is short!) There's an interview with Chad Michael Murray on Youtube which ... okay, some of it is "please stop answering questions about your character now and let me go on imagining that you ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT KIND OF PERSON YOU'RE PLAYING" -- but there's one bit where he talks about how Thompson is a social climber; he's focused on getting ahead, and he adapts himself to be the kind of person he needs to be in order to appeal to the people above him ... and that kinda made me have a "click!" moment, both for writing him and in terms of understanding his canonical behavior. He is the kind of person who's decided he's going to Be A Winner, circa 1945, so that's who he becomes. It's interesting to watch him interact with the Chief in the first couple of episodes because he keeps looking to Dooley for cues on what to do and how to behave (like with the glasses of booze in 1x02 -- he starts to sip his, and then puts it down when Dooley puts his down). And it's also interesting to notice how often Dooley reins him in or dials him back from his more excessive behavior, although as the show goes on and he gets more centered in his skin and more comfortable with Peggy and Sousa, he needs it less.
... This is actually one of the things I'm trying to figure out regarding post-show fics. Thompson has cast himself as, basically, Dooley's attack dog. He's the thug-on-a-leash that Dooley lets go on suspects. But he's more than that -- he's also smart, a good investigator, and he's capable of being fair (giving Sousa due credit for finding the witness in 1x04, for example). The idea of Thompson at his worst in charge of the SSR, without Dooley to knock him down, is potentially terrifying; he could become the bully to end all bullies. Or perhaps not, because he's mellowed somewhat by 1x08, and he does have a conscience (it's just that it tends to kick in after the fact, which helps absolutely no one). So, yeah ... I think I've generally been tending to go for the more optimistic view: that he can figure out where he's gone wrong, he can change, and he is capable of having a warm enough relationship with Peggy and Sousa that they'll help him keep from going wrong, too. That said, it's also a possibility that he might end up giving in to his bully/follow-the-crowd/social-climber side to the point where he becomes a person Peggy has to take down. He's still got both sides to him, the potential hero and the potential bully/thug/petty villain. I completely get why people don't like him. I just find him fascinating in all his flawed mess.
At one point I went through just to rewatch all the Sousa & Thompson scenes, because second to Peggy's growth and development, I love the way they grow and develop throughout the season: from Thompson shutting Sousa out and belittling him in the early episodes; to inviting him along for drinks in 1x05 (I was too distracted by Peggy's face in that scene to notice until I'd rewatched it multiple times that Sousa's expression is almost as startled as Peggy's is at her invitation - in one fait accompli, Thompson invited both of the office pariahs into the inner circle); to the friendly/playful way Thompson relates to him in the last couple of episodes.
If I had been making predictions for this show back in the first couple of episodes, "Sousa and Thompson are going to be fucking cute by 1x08" would really, really not have been on the list. (Nor, for that matter, that I'd have stopped wanting to push Thompson down a handy elevator shaft.)
Actually, Sousa ... okay, I just have to talk about Sousa for a minute, because another of the things I adore about the show is the way that his arc pans out. He's so shockingly alone in the first episode. Nobody in the office is close to him; Peggy's probably about the closest thing he has to a friend there, but she's angry and grieving and very determinedly holding everyone at arm's length. (That little story he tells Peggy in the file storage room to cheer her up is about a million shades of JUST CARVE MY HEART OUT WITH A RUSTY SPOON .... I mean, let's start with the fact that the most cheerful thing he can come up with to make her smile is A STORY ABOUT HOW HE LOST HIS LEG, and move on to how apparently the only person in the world who cares if he lives or dies is his dad, and then let's think about how everyone he works with mocks and belittles him, and then let's all go drown in a pool of tears.)
It's like kicking a puppy, Marvel. I hope you're ashamed of yourselves.
But! He doesn't let that stop him! The central arc of the show is Peggy's trajectory from isolated and angry and alone, to the happy, centered, valued person at the center of a network of relationships that she is at the end of the series. But Sousa gets a kind of mini version of this. He just keeps getting up every time he's knocked down, and going out there and being twice as smart and badass as the rest of them, and by the end he's a valued member of the team and he's action-heroing all over the place. (Adding another check mark to the long, long tally of things I like about this show ... I have a lifelong physical mobility-impairment/chronic pain disability involving my legs, and therefore I latch onto characters who have things wrong with their legs, and seeing Sousa out in the field, arresting people and fighting Black Widows and solving crimes with only one leg just makes me SO HAPPY. He won a fight against Dottie AND he took down the other main bad guy all on his own!)
And Peggy is just amazing. Like I said, I can't remember the last time I found myself relating to a female character this hard. I wasn't expecting it. I liked her in the CA movie, but I didn't feel this way about her! She has such a wonderful journey, though, the kind that female characters very rarely get to have. She starts out isolated, miserable, and angry, mired in grief, seething at the sexist pigheads around her, trapped and stuck and desperately, desperately unhappy. And then, over the course of the show, she works through it -- she makes friends, she saves a friend, she ends up getting accolades and realizes that she doesn't need them, because what really matters is that SHE knows she's worth it.
I want to say she's flawless, but of course she's the exact opposite: she isn't flawless at all, which is what makes her flawless. She's depressed and angry, violent and stubborn, isolated and lonely and filled with grief and rage. She misses her mark, she jumps to the wrong conclusions, she makes mistakes, she gets hurt.
But she's also brave, generous, kind, compassionate, idealistic, intelligent, and basically a hero in every way.
AND SHE'S NOW LIVING IN AN AWESOME MANSION WITH ANGIE, which is the fanficciest setup to ever fanfic.
And, as sweet and darling as Sousa is and would be to her, I actually really like that the show didn't end with her falling into a relationship with him. They could, in the future, and I'd be totally on board if the show wanted to go there, but right now this makes the whole entire show romance-free (aside from some background flirting/femme-fataling) and I just really liked that too, because A WHOLE SHOW ABOUT A FEMALE PROTAGONIST WITHOUT A SINGLE ROMANCE IN IT, HOW IS THIS EVEN A THING. It's lovely that Daniel is into her, but she doesn't owe him romantic feelings in return, and the show doesn't require her to.
And I think her little smile at the end there, after Daniel asks her out and she turns him down, is probably the first time she's thought about having a relationship with anybody since Steve died. It's the first time she's been in a healthy enough place to consider it. And it's just this lovely little "oh! wow! I've still got it!" moment.
This cute guy thinks I'm hot; EEEEEEE!
But it's enough just to know that. She's still feeling out her way post-Steve and post-SSR. She isn't quite ready to jump into a relationship yet. And that's all right. She's good just the way she is.
♥ ♥ PEGGY ♥ ♥
I know the show isn't perfect. As people have legitimately pointed out, it's kind of terrible on race. And the plot is, if not a mess, then certainly a muddle. (Though, at the same time, I'm kind of impressed at how MUCH they managed to pack into just 8 episodes. Going back and getting clips for the vid, I kept having trouble finding some scenes because I thought they must be in later episodes instead of being in the first few; it seemed like so much elapsed in any given episode.) But, oh -- it surprised me constantly, it hit so many of my favorite tropes and character relationship types, it had wonderful banter and humor, it is beautifully stylish in a 1940s kind of way, and I still keep stumbling across new details that I missed when I watched it all the first time. If there is another season, I'm SO TOTALLY THERE, but if not, I think I will probably treasure this show always.
I've been thinking about the aspects of the show that appeal to me, and while there are many reasons why I like it so much, I think part of it is that ... let me see, there is literally NO way to phrase this without sounding (for me) uncomfortably buzzwordy, but it's woman-centric and non-male-gazey not just in a way that most superhero stuff isn't, but even most genre shows starring female characters aren't. I think the big thing I kept feeling watching the show is This show feels like it's written FOR ME. I feel like I, me, my demographic is the target audience of this -- and I don't mean just "women generally" but "women like me"; this show appeals to me in a way that, say, Sex in the City type shows which are also aimed at a female demographic simply don't. I feel like I can relate to women like Peggy and Angie in a way I can't to women in most sci-fi stuff -- I love the female geniuses and leather-clad action heroes with impeccable makeup and so forth, but I don't really feel like "hey, that's me!" And while I don't have any particular problem empathizing with characters who are not like me, I can't remember the last time I've identified with a woman in sci-fi media as hard as I do with Peggy. I love many, many fictional characters, but there is a sort of coming-home comfort to this show (in spite of all the terrible stuff that happens on it) that just makes me feel like this is a sci-fi action show where PEOPLE LIKE ME are welcome and wanted.
That's not even a feeling I go around craving in particular. I literally don't care about that stuff most of the time! I just like what I like, and since I'm a female fan of sci-fi and superhero stuff, a ton of what I like is technically aimed at boys. But in all my many years of loving superheroes, and particularly throughout however many movies and shows I've enjoyed in the MCU, this is the first time I've really felt like somebody made a superhero thing FOR ME, and I had no idea how good that feeling is.
This obviously is not the only reason I like the show or even the main reason(s). It's more like something that snuck up on me and became a substrate underlying everything else I like about the show, if that makes any sense.
(Click screencaps for bigger versions, by the way.)
Ever since the finale, I've been meaning to make a long post about the show with All My Thoughts, but I don't even know where to BEGIN! I start thinking about general things I want to talk about, and little specific things I want to point out, and just bog down because there is SO MUCH I love about this show. I love every single character on it, even the awful ones. I love how thoroughly Peggy-focused it is; everything from the character relationships to the plots pivots around Peggy as its fulcrum (which is something that even a lot of female-focused genre shows often lose sight of). But I also love the mini-arcs that most of the other characters get: Sousa going from the lonely, isolated bottom guy in the office hierarchy to a valued member of the team; Thompson's one-step-forward, two-steps-back waltz with redemption and shades of gray; Jarvis going from butler to (occasional) action hero. I love that the MCU finally gave us a female villain, and she is GREAT: cold as ice, chameleonic, reveling in pain and destruction.
Also - you know how I complained about 1x07 squandering the potential of a mind-controlling villain? 1x08 turned that right around; it was straight out of the
sholio's id Playbook of Mind-Control Tropes. :D (That scene with Sousa and Thompson, omfg.)
Sousa, you amazing troll.
I admit that I've sort of latched onto the Peggy-Sousa-Thompson triad as the platonic (or otherwise) OT3 of my heart, which is not to say I don't have an immense and overwhelming fondness for all the other character relationships on the show. I adore the way that Howard and Peggy, and Peggy and Jarvis, are explicitly set up as platonic and then played out bromance-style. I love Peggy's tentative reaching out to Angie, and the way that Angie gets her, and what she's going through, in a way that none of the guys do, even though Angie doesn't know any of the details of her day-to-day life. (The "I'd like to tell you about my day" scene in the diner in 1x03 is still one of my favorites in the whole series.)
And the whole idea of Peggy and Angie doing normal-person things, when Peggy's never really had a female friend to do normal-girl things with before, is so completely the wish-fulfillment plot of my heart. Well, that or scads of h/c with Peggy and Sousa and Thompson.
... or the actual canon h/c; that's also good.
Just ... ALL THESE RELATIONSHIPS. All these characters. I'm so fantastically multishippy/multi-friendshippy about this show. I could go for buddyfic with just about ANY combination of these people, and I think there's about a half-dozen ships I'm semi-into. (To the extent that I really ship at all, which I don't, much. I kinda just want ALL THE TEAMY GEN/BUDDYFIC/ETC.)
And yeahhhhh, Thompson is my current character I know I shouldn't like but can't help myself. I was kind of relieved to find out he isn't as universally hated in the fandom as I was expecting ... I say kind of relieved because there's a predictable fannish minority for whom he can do no wrong even though HE DOES WRONG ALL THE TIME, OMFG DO YOU EVEN WATCH THE SHOW. I've run across multiple posts on Tumblr claiming that Thompson taking credit for Peggy's heroism at the end of 1x08 is something that he's doing for her, because the world's not ready for her yet. To which I can only say, get off my side, because you are SO WRONG, random tumblr person. He takes credit for her work because he is a jerkass. But he's a jerkass I really fucking like. /o\ I'm just trying to stay clearheaded about what he actually is, and what he does, which is a lot of really awful shit.
I've probably spent more time thinking analytically about Thompson than most of the others due to trying to figure out how to write him, and the way Peggy and Sousa relate to him in the wake of 1x08, in a way that's in-character and fair to everyone. (Yes, I'm writing fanfic. I've currently got 3 different fics in various stages of development; the only reason why I haven't posted anything yet is because nothing is short!) There's an interview with Chad Michael Murray on Youtube which ... okay, some of it is "please stop answering questions about your character now and let me go on imagining that you ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT KIND OF PERSON YOU'RE PLAYING" -- but there's one bit where he talks about how Thompson is a social climber; he's focused on getting ahead, and he adapts himself to be the kind of person he needs to be in order to appeal to the people above him ... and that kinda made me have a "click!" moment, both for writing him and in terms of understanding his canonical behavior. He is the kind of person who's decided he's going to Be A Winner, circa 1945, so that's who he becomes. It's interesting to watch him interact with the Chief in the first couple of episodes because he keeps looking to Dooley for cues on what to do and how to behave (like with the glasses of booze in 1x02 -- he starts to sip his, and then puts it down when Dooley puts his down). And it's also interesting to notice how often Dooley reins him in or dials him back from his more excessive behavior, although as the show goes on and he gets more centered in his skin and more comfortable with Peggy and Sousa, he needs it less.
... This is actually one of the things I'm trying to figure out regarding post-show fics. Thompson has cast himself as, basically, Dooley's attack dog. He's the thug-on-a-leash that Dooley lets go on suspects. But he's more than that -- he's also smart, a good investigator, and he's capable of being fair (giving Sousa due credit for finding the witness in 1x04, for example). The idea of Thompson at his worst in charge of the SSR, without Dooley to knock him down, is potentially terrifying; he could become the bully to end all bullies. Or perhaps not, because he's mellowed somewhat by 1x08, and he does have a conscience (it's just that it tends to kick in after the fact, which helps absolutely no one). So, yeah ... I think I've generally been tending to go for the more optimistic view: that he can figure out where he's gone wrong, he can change, and he is capable of having a warm enough relationship with Peggy and Sousa that they'll help him keep from going wrong, too. That said, it's also a possibility that he might end up giving in to his bully/follow-the-crowd/social-climber side to the point where he becomes a person Peggy has to take down. He's still got both sides to him, the potential hero and the potential bully/thug/petty villain. I completely get why people don't like him. I just find him fascinating in all his flawed mess.
At one point I went through just to rewatch all the Sousa & Thompson scenes, because second to Peggy's growth and development, I love the way they grow and develop throughout the season: from Thompson shutting Sousa out and belittling him in the early episodes; to inviting him along for drinks in 1x05 (I was too distracted by Peggy's face in that scene to notice until I'd rewatched it multiple times that Sousa's expression is almost as startled as Peggy's is at her invitation - in one fait accompli, Thompson invited both of the office pariahs into the inner circle); to the friendly/playful way Thompson relates to him in the last couple of episodes.
If I had been making predictions for this show back in the first couple of episodes, "Sousa and Thompson are going to be fucking cute by 1x08" would really, really not have been on the list. (Nor, for that matter, that I'd have stopped wanting to push Thompson down a handy elevator shaft.)
Actually, Sousa ... okay, I just have to talk about Sousa for a minute, because another of the things I adore about the show is the way that his arc pans out. He's so shockingly alone in the first episode. Nobody in the office is close to him; Peggy's probably about the closest thing he has to a friend there, but she's angry and grieving and very determinedly holding everyone at arm's length. (That little story he tells Peggy in the file storage room to cheer her up is about a million shades of JUST CARVE MY HEART OUT WITH A RUSTY SPOON .... I mean, let's start with the fact that the most cheerful thing he can come up with to make her smile is A STORY ABOUT HOW HE LOST HIS LEG, and move on to how apparently the only person in the world who cares if he lives or dies is his dad, and then let's think about how everyone he works with mocks and belittles him, and then let's all go drown in a pool of tears.)
It's like kicking a puppy, Marvel. I hope you're ashamed of yourselves.
But! He doesn't let that stop him! The central arc of the show is Peggy's trajectory from isolated and angry and alone, to the happy, centered, valued person at the center of a network of relationships that she is at the end of the series. But Sousa gets a kind of mini version of this. He just keeps getting up every time he's knocked down, and going out there and being twice as smart and badass as the rest of them, and by the end he's a valued member of the team and he's action-heroing all over the place. (Adding another check mark to the long, long tally of things I like about this show ... I have a lifelong physical mobility-impairment/chronic pain disability involving my legs, and therefore I latch onto characters who have things wrong with their legs, and seeing Sousa out in the field, arresting people and fighting Black Widows and solving crimes with only one leg just makes me SO HAPPY. He won a fight against Dottie AND he took down the other main bad guy all on his own!)
And Peggy is just amazing. Like I said, I can't remember the last time I found myself relating to a female character this hard. I wasn't expecting it. I liked her in the CA movie, but I didn't feel this way about her! She has such a wonderful journey, though, the kind that female characters very rarely get to have. She starts out isolated, miserable, and angry, mired in grief, seething at the sexist pigheads around her, trapped and stuck and desperately, desperately unhappy. And then, over the course of the show, she works through it -- she makes friends, she saves a friend, she ends up getting accolades and realizes that she doesn't need them, because what really matters is that SHE knows she's worth it.
I want to say she's flawless, but of course she's the exact opposite: she isn't flawless at all, which is what makes her flawless. She's depressed and angry, violent and stubborn, isolated and lonely and filled with grief and rage. She misses her mark, she jumps to the wrong conclusions, she makes mistakes, she gets hurt.
But she's also brave, generous, kind, compassionate, idealistic, intelligent, and basically a hero in every way.
AND SHE'S NOW LIVING IN AN AWESOME MANSION WITH ANGIE, which is the fanficciest setup to ever fanfic.
And, as sweet and darling as Sousa is and would be to her, I actually really like that the show didn't end with her falling into a relationship with him. They could, in the future, and I'd be totally on board if the show wanted to go there, but right now this makes the whole entire show romance-free (aside from some background flirting/femme-fataling) and I just really liked that too, because A WHOLE SHOW ABOUT A FEMALE PROTAGONIST WITHOUT A SINGLE ROMANCE IN IT, HOW IS THIS EVEN A THING. It's lovely that Daniel is into her, but she doesn't owe him romantic feelings in return, and the show doesn't require her to.
And I think her little smile at the end there, after Daniel asks her out and she turns him down, is probably the first time she's thought about having a relationship with anybody since Steve died. It's the first time she's been in a healthy enough place to consider it. And it's just this lovely little "oh! wow! I've still got it!" moment.
This cute guy thinks I'm hot; EEEEEEE!
But it's enough just to know that. She's still feeling out her way post-Steve and post-SSR. She isn't quite ready to jump into a relationship yet. And that's all right. She's good just the way she is.
♥ ♥ PEGGY ♥ ♥
I know the show isn't perfect. As people have legitimately pointed out, it's kind of terrible on race. And the plot is, if not a mess, then certainly a muddle. (Though, at the same time, I'm kind of impressed at how MUCH they managed to pack into just 8 episodes. Going back and getting clips for the vid, I kept having trouble finding some scenes because I thought they must be in later episodes instead of being in the first few; it seemed like so much elapsed in any given episode.) But, oh -- it surprised me constantly, it hit so many of my favorite tropes and character relationship types, it had wonderful banter and humor, it is beautifully stylish in a 1940s kind of way, and I still keep stumbling across new details that I missed when I watched it all the first time. If there is another season, I'm SO TOTALLY THERE, but if not, I think I will probably treasure this show always.
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Ahh, this post brings back all the happy feelings. ♥♥♥
I am largely in it for the joy that is The Peggy & Edwin Show, but all these other things too, especially Peggy herself, and her plot arc, and that they didn't pair her off with anyone (while leaving a billion options open! personally of the guys I like Sousa best and of the female options, Angie obviously). That was fantastic. And the way that all the callbacks to Steve's death were about her and how she was processing it--such a nice flip from women's stories being warped around men's. Really unexpected and lovely.
Also love how she doesn't fight "like a girl" or even with any particular finesse--she knows what she's doing so it's not like she's flailing pointlessly, but she's hitting and punching and kicking and grabbing things to smack people in the head with--it's all for the most effective way of taking someone down, even if it doesn't look stylish. Which also is satisfying to see in a female fighter...not that there's anything wrong with the Natasha Romanov sorts of graceful fighting, but we can't all be ballet dancers while getting the shit kicked out of us, you know?
(And! Red Room backstory! Also too!)
Sousa and the earplugs was beautiful. So beautiful. :D
And gravy pockets in purses! And Jarvis and fake confessions and being the designated girlfriend-handler for Howard! And Angie's Oscar-worthy acting skills ("her grandma died and I'm so SAD")! And the Howling Commandos, and and and.
I think you've hit the nail on the head that this feels like a show for me, in many ways. Not perfect, but damn good at what it does.
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And the way that all the callbacks to Steve's death were about her and how she was processing it--such a nice flip from women's stories being warped around men's.
YES. The whole show, really, was wrapped around Peggy and what Peggy was feeling, which is something I don't think I'd realized is so incredibly rare even in nominally women-centered shows (like the perennial complaint of Fringe fans that the show ultimately ends up downplaying Olivia and making her auxiliary to the male characters' storyline). This show DOESN'T DO THAT; as great as the supporting cast is, it's always about Peggy from start to end.
Also love how she doesn't fight "like a girl" or even with any particular finesse--she knows what she's doing so it's not like she's flailing pointlessly, but she's hitting and punching and kicking and grabbing things to smack people in the head with--it's all for the most effective way of taking someone down, even if it doesn't look stylish.
Oh, that's a fantastic point I hadn't even really thought about! Yes, you're right -- and I wonder if that's another of the many small things that gives me such a strong feeling of "I can relate to this character" ... because most female fighters on TV, especially the really badass ones, have a particular balletic, high-kick way of fighting. Like you said, there's nothing wrong with it, and I love watching it ... but Peggy just picks up a stapler and bashes people in the face with it. And that's something a lot more down-to-earth, that you can imagine yourself doing. Dottie knocks the gun out of Sousa's hand by doing a high-kick on him, but the way Peggy disarms Thompson is more like a (comparatively) ordinary self-defense move. You're right: she's not a graceful fighter, she's a grappler -- a means-to-an-end, "finish this fight as fast as possible" dirty fighter. And that's so great; there are so few female characters on TV who fight like that.
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Everyone was so complex! And the men were jerks, but not incompetent! They didn't make them one-dimensional incompetent jerks!
I...
<3
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Yesssss. :D I think that's it exactly. I know it has flaws, but its delivery of everything I wanted was flawless.
Everyone was so complex! And the men were jerks, but not incompetent! They didn't make them one-dimensional incompetent jerks!
SO MUCH YES to this. I went into the show expecting it to be essentially Peggy running rings around a bunch of useless sexist jerks. But they weren't! Even the truly awful ones - even Krzmenski, who has literally NOTHING going for him as a person, ended up being more than just a joke when everyone reacted to his death. And whether you loved or hated them in the end -- and believe me, even though I found myself being won over by Dooley and Thompson, I COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND why someone wouldn't -- they still had good qualities (intelligence, competence, badassery) mixed in with their unlikable qualities.
It was just such an unexpectedly complex show; it was a show with a brain, that gave the viewer credit for handling nuance. I loved that so much. And I'm so happy Peggy has her own recurring nemesis now! :D DOTTIE! How are you so awful and yet so much fun.
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(... well, okay, actually I do have a theory about that: it seems like some fandoms latch onto enemy pairings, and some prefer sweet pairings, and all the Peggy/Angie I've read has been super sweet, so maybe this fandom just doesn't have much of a dirtybadwrong contingent. BUT STILL!)
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BUT PEGGY! <3333333
I want to say she's flawless, but of course she's the exact opposite: she isn't flawless at all, which is what makes her flawless. She's depressed and angry, violent and stubborn, isolated and lonely and filled with grief and rage. She misses her mark, she jumps to the wrong conclusions, she makes mistakes, she gets hurt.
I just want to frame this and put it on my wall. YES. This is why I adore Peggy.
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<3 <3 I really appreciate this - though trust me, I UNDERSTAND COMPLETELY your feelings on Thompson! And I also agree that the denouement of both of their story arcs were in character and fit with what had gone before.
BUT YES. PEGGY. <333333 I love that she's allowed to be angry and broken, and then to pull herself out of the mud (with a little help here and there) and be a much happier person by the end, all without condemning her for being angry and broken, or implying she doesn't have a perfect right to feel that way.
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As for Thompson, his accepting the praise at the end is exactly the same thing that happened with his Navy Cross. He didn't seek out the attention or praise or acclamation ... but when offered he smiles and accepts it, even though he knows it's wrong. It's not that, at base, he's out to screw other people over or be horrible (although he can be when he chooses), it's that if he knows something is wrong but it benefits him, he's going to accept it and work to maintain him. He's not a jerk or a bad guy because he likes being one, he's a jerk and a bad guy because given a straight-up chance between "do the right thing but it'll cost you" and "do what benefits you," he chooses the selfish course most of the time.
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Yeah I pretty much ranted about how the show could not possibly expect me to care about Thompson's nonsense after the Russia ep, and here it turns out that I do kind of care about Thompson's nonsense. Like I don't have to like him to be interested in him, if that makes sense. I definitely don't get the Loki-style rewriting of canon to make him the hero/victim, but he turned into an interesting foil. I love the idea of a season 2 (fingers crossed) in which Peggy kicks all the ass and Sousa backs her up by hitting people with his crutch, and Thompson is in charge and he mostly hinders and yells at them but occasionally is helpful and sympathetic.
One of the quotes regarding Peggy/Sousa from the showrunners is that she really is not ready to move on from Steve (and her general EVERYONE I LOVE DIES headspace) in this season. But then in that last scene with Daniel where she turns him down, she realises she might be kinda getting there? But it doesn't have to be with him, necessarily. Which I love. I mean I do kinda ship them but really the OTP here is Peggy Carter/her full potential.
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And a million times yes to your last paragraph. :) I love that the show is giving Peggy room to grieve, and room to be herself -- not trying to compress her emotional journey into "and then she moved on and learned to love again". It's so much more complicated than that, which makes me so happy. <3
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Except for those fun scenes with Dum Dum, and the cathartic yelling/crying with Howard, the show really hit that note of mourning Steve but having no one she felt she could talk to about it. Peggy opening up in season 2 is also on the wishlist, I think.
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Various Things I Have Loved:
+ Peggy's emotional arc that goes from isolated/grieving (and consequently latching on to the past, where she was happy/busy, too hard; see: trusting Howard Stark further than you can throw him) and clumsy emotionally (she hurts Angie, she's angry with coworkers, she says she trusts Jarvis and then realises she doesn't) to connected and moving forward and with a grip on emotional ties (she handles Sousa's drink invitation well! Not a sharp denial but not afraid to decline/counteroffer!)
+ ANGIE! Angie is totally the Bucky to Peggy's Steve: she gets rebuffed and rejected ("I had him on the ropes!" / "I don't need charity!") but she just keeps trying, patiently and with humour, and it works in the long run! She backs Peggy up in tight places (the crying-on-the-agents scene!
Bucky snipes for Steve, and Angie monologues for Peg) and tries to keep her fed and sheltered ("come live at the Griffith with me! Here, stick some bread in your handbag! Let's eat pie!") and I just really love watching them bromance each other/develop that "closer than brothers" relationship
+ Daniel/Peggy/Jack ~*~emotions~*~ all over the place here! Lovedlovedloved the "trying to kill him" scene, and the showdown with CreepyDoc scene! Although I really only like Thompson when he's being a foil for one of the others; by himself I don't have much interest in him, though it's somewhat intriguing to wonder what's made him change his mind about the Office Outcasts. (After setting Sousa up to walk in on Peggy/Peggy to be spotted half-nude by Sousa, no less! That felt very... well. Steve Rogers doesn't like bullies, and neither do I.)
+ Jarvis! My mind keeps wandering back to his relationship with Howard Stark, and I'm forming a picture of their relationship that's very much the opposite of Howard & Peggy's... but seems to be a lot more in line with Howard and his continual stream of girls, or with the public image Howard projects.
I should collect all my thoughts for some real meta!Peggy sort of fell into Jarvis's view of Stark for a while, maybe because she'd been hanging out with him so much? But she gets her much clearer view back in the end, which makes me glad.+ Peggy's fighting style! As others have noted: there are no ballet moves or showboating flourishes, she just hits people until they stay down. It really backs up the idea of her being a war vet, as opposed to a flashy assassin/supersoldier/other specialist. I could bet Dugan taught her/made her practice fighting, along with Steve; Peggy fights like someone who needs to get the objective accomplished, not like somebody who had fifteen years of elite training (e.g. Dottie, Natasha) before facing battle. As a practical sort, myself, I love that! Because when the only female fighters we get are half-aerialist-gymnast and half-superpowered, it's kind of... girls can fight, but they need to be graceful and also have a decade of special teaching. I went from really liking the show to LOVING the show during the scene where she trots down the stairs, snags a briefcase, and belts the escaping suspect across the knees with it without fanfare. THAT is what I want more of from my female characters!
+ Sousa! Love having a canon disabled character who can angst about his loss (and has some pretty darn legit cultural reasons to do so) AND doesn't lose himself in the angst or get reduced to nothing but the angst! His life is harder, and people judge him for it... but he can still joke about it, even use it (Dottie's ambush failed because she wasn't expecting him to have the reach the crutch gave him!) and ultimately doesn't let it stop him from doing what he wants (asking Peggy out - after he's been told point-blank by a peer that it renders him ineligible for romance). I have a LOT of thoughts about this, actually, and I really ought to round them up into a proper post sometime soon!
I could go on forever, but I think instead I'll try to make some posts in my own journal in the next few days, hopefully with more coherence and less flailing. :D ANYWAY! Yes to all of the things, positive and negative. I really am hoping for a second season!
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(I hope you do make those posts! It's a very small fandom, for all that it's a very squeeful/show-positive fandom -- at least that I've seen -- and it would be so lovely to have more episode thoughts to wallow around in!)
Augh, I love Peggy's emotional journey in this SO MUCH. And, as per some of the above discussion, I especially love that it's not reduced to "and then she moves on and finds another man". NO NO. She is allowed to be angry and broken and grieving, and to get through it in her own time and her own way. Maybe someday she will marry again (well, based on future canon it's fairly certain) but she doesn't have to in order to get better. And she is getting better, and building up a little circle of people again. D'awwwww.
I just really love watching them bromance each other/develop that "closer than brothers" relationship
eeeeeeee, me tooooo! ♥ I don't know if I quite see them as a Steve-Bucky analog -- though you make a good case for it! -- but they have totally got all the friendship cuteness and intimacy going on, and I'm particularly delighted that fandom has latched onto them the way they so often do to male/male bromance pairs. Peggy and Angie are BY FAR the biggest pairing in the fandom, at least on AO3, which is absolutely wonderful. I guess it's terribly gratifying to me that sometimes, if canon gives us those snarky/playful/die-for-ya-buddy relationships between two women, fandom WILL seize hold of it and run with it. (See, Gamora and Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy SHOULD have been one of those too, but they never really got developed onscreen, even though the relationship was fannish catnip, it wasn't really shown, which I suspect is one of the reasons why it didn't seem to be seized onto by the fandom. But in this case, we DID see everything and we DID get the emotional depth, and fandom responded to that, which I'm thoroughly delighted by. Okay, Marvel, you did it once -- NOW DO IT MORE.)
I cannot get over the sheer delight that they're living together in Howard's mansion. SO MUCH POTENTIAL AWESOME. Peggy gets to have a girl BFF and a creepy-evil girl nemesis ... GAWD I LOVE THIS SHOWWWWWWW, IT IS THE SHOW OF MY HEART.
Daniel/Peggy/Jack ~*~emotions~*~ all over the place here!
SO MANY EMOTIONS! (Also, I'm glad I'm not alone!)
If you'd told me at the beginning that I would be suffering a complete FEELINGSBOMB over the three of them by the end of the series, I would've just laughed (or been baffled). But! How did this show give me so many feelings for them, HOW? I think to some extent I'm kind of with you on Thompson, though for me it has the added element that I'm trying to write him, so I'm doing a whole lot of character analysis because of that. I find him interesting as a character, to analyze and to watch, and I do really like him (though I feel a trifle conflicted on that), but he doesn't throw me into raptures of delight in the same way Peggy and Sousa do. He is still a jerk; he does walk back from a lot of his potential at the end there, taking the easy way (that screws over his nascent friendships with the other two) rather than doing the right thing; and yes, he is a bully. But there's still so much potential there -- he could be more, if he can get past his worst impulses. And I love the way they all relate to each other; I love watching Peggy and Sousa bring out Jack's better side, and Jack using his influence for good rather than bad, to draw the office outcasts into the center of things. (I think that's what particularly gets to me about his "hey, killer" to Sousa after the poison-gas incident, because Sousa obviously walks in feeling uncertain about his reception, and Jack just grins and gives him a playful greeting ... depending on how uncharitable one was inclined to be towards Jack, you could certainly see that as unfriendly mocking, but I didn't get that feeling off it at all; it's more like "hey, I know you tried to strangle me, but everything is cool" -- the same sort of reassurance Peggy gave him regarding his attack on her, but in a more, er, Thompson-ish way -- and not just to let Sousa know it but to let the whole room know it.)
it's somewhat intriguing to wonder what's made him change his mind about the Office Outcasts
Well, at least partly that there were only eight episodes to work with. *g* But, yeah, it is a really fascinating shift, though seemed to me that there were definite catalyzing incidences for both of them. With Peggy, of course, it was Russia (getting smacked upside the head with her competence, and the Commandoes' respect for her, and her sympathy for his problems), and with Sousa, I think, it was mostly the previous episode -- Thompson having realized in 1x04 that Sousa is actually really good at his job, then their discussion at the end about war, and I think that was catalyzed by everything that happened to him in Russia into Jack realizing on some level that Sousa's a genuine war hero, and Jack's been pretty shitty to him. I mean, yes, I'm reading a lot into it, but it seems like the invitation to go out and have drinks at the end is a kind of oblique apology for the previous episode, or at least an olive branch.
I get the general impression that, once Jack stops dismissing Sousa as the office paper boy, he starts to really like him, as a person. (Quite possibly more than Sousa likes him, given the history there.) Sousa's the one he seems to preferentially team up with in the last few episodes, and there's that lovely little bit of worry when Sousa gets gassed.
Actually, the thing I wondered about even more than why he decided to be Sousa's friend -- or was even more impressed by, I guess -- is Jack's confidence in Sousa as a field agent in the last couple of episodes. With Peggy, at least, he's seen her fight, first in Russia and then getting completely outclassed by her the first time he has to fight her for real. But with Sousa, there isn't really a similar inciting incident for Jack coming to rely on him as a field agent ... well, until after the fight with Dottie I suppose (I still find it fascinating that Sousa's the only person besides Peggy who's gone toe to toe with her and lived), but it was particularly the scene where everyone is splitting up to search the building for Dottie that made me think about it. Jack's little warning to Sousa before they split up, about not wanting to tangle with grown-up Black Widows after seeing what baby ones can do ... he knows what he's sending him up against, and he obviously doesn't feel great about it, but he doesn't bench Sousa, he just goes ahead and deploys him like the rest of the agents. And that means a lot, really, I think.
(One thing I was speculating about in the comments on the LJ side ... I don't recall Jack ever outright insulting Sousa's disability, does he? Not in the same overt and offensive way that, say, Krzeminski does. He makes fun of Sousa and is even one of the ringleaders in putting him down in the first few episodes because it's the popular-kid thing to do, but there's not the same kind of pointedly ableist vibe to it. About the only thing I can come up with off the top of my head is his "crutch faster!" from 1x06, but by that point it's more a sort of, I guess, giving him shit in a friendly way. It's always possible I'm forgetting something. But, especially considering the speed with which Jack shifts to relying on him in the field, I don't really get the idea that he judges him for that. Lord knows Jack has more than enough flaws, but looking down on Sousa for being disabled doesn't actually seem to be one of them. I think.)
Ahhhhhh, I would love to read ALL your thoughts on Sousa, because in just 8 episodes I've fallen for him SO HARD. I love what the show does with him, love it to pieces; I love how his disability does impact his life, and he does struggle with it, physically and mentally -- as one would. But he is also a FUCKING BADASS anyway (and a complete sweetheart). I think if the show doesn't have another season, losing Sousa is what'll hurt the most. Peggy and Jarvis, at least, have close enough connections to other players in the MCU that we'll probably see them again. But if we don't get more seasons, this is most likely all we'll ever see of Sousa and his asskicking crutch skills, and that would hurt.
(Please let there be a season 2!)
Ngghhhh, and I haven't even talked about Jarvis yet! Or Howard! So much to say about this showwwww! :D
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There's so much that I've loved about this show. And you've hit on some of those things -- that it's a whole show about a woman without a romance; that Peggy is awesome with awesomesauce; that Sousa's arc is like a smaller mirror of Peggy's, in terms of people realizing that there's more to him than they thought; that it's so stylish and visually gorgeous.
I am all over Peggy/Sousa. And I love that he's entirely unlike Steve. I adore Steve, and I adore Sousa, and I guess they both have the same basic moral core of goodness and kindness -- but aside from that they're really different guys, and I like that. I love that Sousa isn't portrayed as a wounded bird; yes, he lost a leg, and no, that doesn't make him any less valuable as a human being or an agent of the SSR. And I do love some good h/c, and I could imagine some truly gorgeous post-series fic featuring the two of them. That said, I will happily read your triostuff, whether it's shippy or platonic, because that sounds like a lot of fun too.
In sum: SHOW ♥ ♥ ♥
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It is a really pretty, stylish show! I started rewatching it today with a friend who hadn't seen it, and we were oohing and ahhhing over the lovely period clothes/set design, and the generally excellent period vibe that they managed to produce, in the sense that it really feels like a different era, as historical shows don't always manage to do. (Okay, technically I guess they should all be smoking like chimneys, but eh, creative license ...)
And yeah, I agree with what you're saying about Sousa being different from Steve, and the nuanced way that the show handles Sousa and his disability. It's very hard for him, and he's struggling with a lot of emotional stuff because of it, but he's not presented as an object of pity or a helpless victim of despair. Oh show! My kingdom for a season two ...
On a related note, I recently joined a locked Peggy/Sousa comm on LJ:
My big trio fic is currently being beta'd, so I will hopefully be able to post it soon! :) This fandom is so different from my previous one; I spent the last year in the Steve/Bucky wing of MCU fandom, which was HUGE, and so incredibly fast-paced, where any fic you can think of would probably have a dozen iterations before you got around to posting yours. (Much like SGA, back in the day.) This is such a small, quiet fandom that there's literally nobody else writing fic like I'm writing. So weird!
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